Father and Ford revisited: gender, class and employment change in the new millennium

In the last decade in Britain the combination of women's continued entry into the labour market and the restructuring of welfare provision has exacerbated the growing demands on individuals and households in their allocation of time between productive and reproductive labour and the contradictions between the two spheres, as well as time and income inequalities between the rich and the poor. Since the election of the new Labour government in 1997, the concept of work/life balance, as well as a range of other policies to address these divisions have been introduced. This paper addresses the nature of the changes in the last decade, through the perspective of gender and class divisions and critically assesses key debates about the changing nature of working life as well as current policy provisions to support the increasing individualization of employment.     

移动信息技术影响下的城市空间结构研究进展

手机用户、手机网民规模的不断增大意味着移动信息技术的出现和应用带来了信息革命的第二阶段。移动信息技术开始赋予了空间以新的内涵,其影响下的空间结构成为地理学研究的主要内容之一。本文重点梳理西方学者近些年来关于移动信息技术及其影响下的城市研究范式、研究内容变化的最新成果,以期了解最近的学术动态,并为国内相关研究提供一定借鉴。     

大数据时代的人文地理研究与应用实践

信息通信技术快速发展带来了大数据时代的到来,改变着区域或城市空间组织及居民行为,流空间成为人类活动的主要载体,并使得人文地理学理论与方法面临革新。本文在梳理国内外文献基础上,认为大数据时代的人文地理研究开始更加注重自然与人文学科间的融合、数据密集型研究方法的革新、以居民活动为主体的人本科学性,并构建了人文地理学及其主要分支学科在大数据时代研究的总体框架。同时,也提出了大数据面向空间规划方法和技术、居民个体行为决策优化、企业运营决策、政府宏观政策制定与管理等方面的应用方向。     

Women's paid work and moral economies of care

Female labour force participation has been increasing in recent decades, in part encouraged by state policies to raise the employment rate to encourage economic competitiveness and combat social exclusion. Social provision for care, however, has lagged behind this increase, creating practical and moral dilemmas for individuals and for society, facing parents with complex choices about how to combine work and care. In this paper, we draw on a qualitative study in London to explore the extent to which the large-scale entry of women into waged work is altering women's understandings of their duties and responsibilities to care for others. We conclude that their decisions are influenced by class position, entrenched gender inequalities in the labour market, varying abilities to pay for care and complex gendered understandings of caring responsibilities.     

Whither labor geography and the rise of the robots?

The rise of the robots suggests a technological revolution like no other. It heralds potentially profound impacts on jobs and labor markets. Geographers have so far remained relatively quiet about such transformations. This commentary suggests ways in which social and cultural geographers can expand upon a robust labor geography and the debates surrounding the relationship between robots, robotic technologies, and labor. Six areas of engagement are offered that outline the richness and nuance of social and cultural geographical analysis related to the ‘rise of the robots’ at a time where much of the popular discourse around robotics is characterized by the extremities of either dystopian angst or positive boosterism. We call on social and cultural geographers to engage in conceptually rigorous and empirically informed research that provides novel ways of making sense of the multiple dimensions of our robotic futures.     

Expressing Anxiety? Breast pump usage in American wage workplaces

This article considers the potential and problems for women seeking to combine breastfeeding with wage labor outside the home through the use of breast pumps. After locating the breast pump within cultural, historical and legislative contexts of shifting views about infant nutrition on the one hand and trends in women's participation in the wage work force on the other, we unpack how this technology has re-shaped the landscape of choices about infant feeding in the United States. Using disciplinary lenses of science and technology studies, feminist geography and women's studies, we examine how the breast pump has reshaped workplace experiences after childbirth. Based on interviews and survey data with respondents in Albany, New York across a range of class and racial backgrounds, we submit that while the breast pump does allow some women to combine breastfeeding and wage work outside the home, the advantages of breast pumps are constrained both by cultural attitudes about pumping as an activity, the lack of a sufficient legislative framework, as well as by the way workplaces themselves are designed.     

建国后日本归国华侨的工作与生活——以《建国初期回国旅日华侨留学生文集》为考察对象

本文以《回国五十年——建国初期回国旅日华侨留学生文集》一书为中心,结合其他一些相关的文献资料,比较全面系统地分析研究20世纪后期从日本归国的华侨留学生在国内工作与生活的情况,希望能够对中华人民共和国归国华侨历史与日本华侨华人历史的研究工作有所启示。